Combat of The Thirty - Reputation

Reputation

While the combat did not have any effect on the outcome of the Breton war of succession, it was considered by contemporaries to be an example of the finest chivalry. It was sung by trouvères, retold in the chronicles of Froissart and largely admired, and honoured in verse and the visual arts. A commemorative stone was placed at the site of the combat situated between Josselin and Ploermel. The renown attached to those who participated was such that twenty years later, Jean Froissart noticed a scarred survivor, Yves Charruel, at the table of Charles V, where he was honoured above all others due to having been one of the Thirty.

According to historian Steven Muhlberger, this chivalric version concentrates on "how the deed was done and not on who won. The willingness of all concerned to agree to rules and to actually observe them, to fight their best and not to run when injured or in danger of capture are the focus - and both sides are shown as equally worthy in that respect."

Later, the combat came to be seen in very different terms, influenced by the most famous of the contemporary popular ballads on the topic. In this version the English knights are villains, and the Blois faction are loyal and worthy local warriors. The balladeer lists each fighter on both sides (though garbles several English names). He situates the Franco-Breton Blois faction as all local gentry and aristocracy performing their proper social duty to protect the people, thus justifying "the privileges that nobles held as brave defenders of the weak". The Montfortists are a melange of foreign mercenaries and brigands who "torment the poor people". After Brittany was absorbed into France, this version was incorporated into French nationalist accounts of the Hundred Years War, which was portrayed as a heroic struggle against foreign invaders who sought to violate France. Since the French faction had lost the War of Succession itself, the Combat was promoted as a symbolic and moral victory. A large monumental obelisk was commissioned by Napoleon in 1811 to be placed at the site of the battle, but it was not built during his reign. It was eventually erected in 1819 by the restored Bourbon king Louis XVIII, after the fall of Napoleon, with an inscription stating "God give the King long life, the Bourbons eternity!" The inscription goes on to assert that the "thirty Bretons whose names are given as follows, fought to defend the poor, labourers and craftsmen and they vanquished foreigners attracted on the soil of the Country by fateful dissents. Breton posterity, imitate your ancestors!"

Though the combat had much less significance for the English, the fact that it was won because one combatant mounted a horse to break the Anglo-Breton line was later portrayed as evidence that the Franco-Bretons cheated. Edward Smedley's History of France (1836) states that the manoeuvre "wears some appearance of treachery". This version was fictionalised by Arthur Conan Doyle in his historical novel Sir Nigel, in which Bemborough (called Richard of Bambro' in the novel) accepts the rules of the challenge in a chivalric spirit, but the Franco-Bretons only win because Montauban, portrayed as Beaumanoir's squire, mounts his horse, when the conflict was supposed to be on foot, and rides upon the English trampling them.

A free English translation in verse of the ballad was written by Harrison Ainsworth, who gives the name of the English leader as "Sir Robert Pembroke". He is fancifully portrayed as the overall English leader after the death of Thomas Dagworth. Ainsworth argued that "Bembro" was originally "Pembroke" on the grounds that the Breton language version of the name was "Pennbrock". "Penn brock" means "badger head" in Breton, which had become a derogatory nickname for Bemborough in Breton ballads.